


I Find It Hard to Tell You

by runsinthefamily



Series: Purgatory [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Purgatory, goodbye Lightbulb, hurt!castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:01:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runsinthefamily/pseuds/runsinthefamily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <img/>
</p><p> </p><p>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/daadi/2193265424/">Ahmed Riyazi Mohamed</a></p>
    </blockquote>





	I Find It Hard to Tell You

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Photo by [Ahmed Riyazi Mohamed](http://www.flickr.com/photos/daadi/2193265424/)

Another cave, this one dark and hollow, floored with red-black sand as soft as feathers. Dean sits crosslegged, one of Cas’s heavy, massive heads in his lap. Cool, smooth, eggshell-white flesh presses hard into his shins, shivers beneath his hands. The ram’s head lays against the sand. The stump, less raw now, still horrible to look at, seeps silver not-quite-wet down his right thigh. There is a pool of it beneath his knee, which provides the only light. The drops, when they impact, make a high, tiny ping! that reminds Dean of Lightbulb.

He rubs his chest, feeling the soreness there, the phantom warmth. He thinks he knows where the little guy is now, and it is both comforting and queasy-making.

 _ **Dean,**_ says Cas, eyes still shut. 

“Still here,” Dean says, putting his hand back to Cas’s forehead.

_**Yes. I know.** _

“Your uh, your neck looks a bit better.”

_**I am healing.** _

“Will it - grow back?”

 _ **No.**_ Cas stirs, his wings rustling across the sand. Dean can’t read the movement in the dark. 

Dean bows his head over Cas. “She said you would heal.”

 _ **I will.**_ Two fingers reach up, brush feather-soft down the side of Dean’s face. _**Don’t weep.**_

“Fuck that, man, I thought you were dying. I thought …” He takes in a shaky breath. “I think Lightbulb is dead. Or gone, or - whatever.”

 _ **He isn’t gone. Just changed.**_ Cas opens his eyes. _**He wasn’t sentient, Dean. He wasn’t a he.**_

“Bullshit,” says Dean. “He talked to us, he - he sacrificed for us.”

_**Because that was how you saw him. I told you before, Dean, you shape this place, your will is strong here.** _

Dean hunches his shoulders forward. “You’re saying - I made him do it. I made him die for us.”

 _ **You infected a stray spark of grace with courage and free will. And then he chose.**_ Cas’s eyes squinch a little at the corners. _**I think it’s becoming a habit with you.**_

“Don’t joke,” Dean says, shaking his head. 

_**What would he have been without you, Dean? Forever wandering, forever lost, nothing more than a scrap of sadness. Honour his choice.**_ Cas drops his fingertips to Dean’s chest. 

“So he’s really in there, is he?” Dean shifts.

 _ **Yes.**_ Cas blinks at his expression. _ **It’s hardly the first time, Dean.**_

“Wait, what?”

 _ **Every time I have healed you, transported you, I have left a small portion of my Grace behind. It’s an unavoidable side effect.**_ Cas tilts his head. Upside down, nearly featureless and reclining, yet its the same _I don’t understand your odd human reactions_ look he’d given Dean so many times before. 

“Every - you mean - Uriel? Zachariah? I got their bits floating around too?” Dean grimaces. “Gross, man. You didn’t think to tell me that before?”

_**It’s temporary. The Grace integrates with your soul. Lightbulb will do so, as well.** _

“Great,” Dean mutters. “He dies and then I eat him.”

 _ **That is an inaccurate metaphor.**_ Cas attempts to sit up and pauses, his whole body stiff and shaking.

“Whoa, whoa,” says Dean, pressing ineffectually on a broad, velvet skinned shoulder. “Where are you going?”

_**The portal is near, I think. There is no other reason for Leviathan to have been close.** _

“What, are they gatekeepers? Lay down, Cas, dammit.” He shoves as hard as he can and Cas gives way, relaxing back into Dean’s lap in small, pained increments.

 _ **The next domain is theirs,**_ Cas says. _ **It should be mostly empty.**_

“Right.” Dean keeps his voice level. “Because most of them are topside.”

 _ **A few did get swept back down when I expelled the souls,**_ says Cas. _**And, of course …**_

“Dick,” Dean says. “Well, fuck.” He clenches his jaw for a moment. They cannot catch a break, it seems, no matter what pocket of existence they were in. “All the more reason for you to rest up,” he says, “if we have to take that asshole on again.”

 _ **Perhaps.**_ Cas sounds exhausted. He turns, slowly and painfully, with Dean’s fumbling help, until he is curled around Dean like a giant cat, his cheek pillowed on Dean’s thighs, the stump hidden, the ram’s head drooping against the curve of a wing. The other wing Cas sweeps around them both like an ozone-scented tent. Dean leans sideways against the solid warmth of Cas’s chest.

In the near-total darkness, cradled and cradling, Dean feels as close to sleep as he’s gotten in Purgatory. Cas’ breath slows, the wing over Dean’s head softens and relaxes a bit. Feathers tickle the back of his neck.

“I thought you were dying,” says Dean. 

_**You saved me.** _

“Anytime,” says Dean, and closes his eyes.


End file.
